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Asia 'falling short' in HIV treatment

Ron Corben

Asia is falling short on HIV/AIDS treatment as almost 400,000 new cases are reported each year, Australia's Ambassador on HIV/AIDS, Murray Proctor, says.

Mr Proctor, attending a regional conference on universal access to treatment for AIDS, said availability and price of vital anti-retroviral medications remain a challenge for the region.

"New infections are outstripping the response and certainly access to treatment people can have," Mr Proctor told more than 200 delegates from the Asia-Pacific region preparing for a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in June.

UNAIDS estimates across Asia some five million people are living with HIV, little changed from five years earlier. There are some 360,000 people newly infected with HIV in 2009 from 450,000 in 2001, a fall of 20 per cent.

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While India, Nepal and Thailand saw new infection rates fall by 25 per cent in the eight years to 2009, new HIV infections rose by more than 25 per cent in Bangladesh and the Philippines over the same period.

Mr Proctor said more attention needs to focus on preventing the spread of the virus.

"We haven't been as good with prevention as we have with treatment. There have been some really major successes in reducing the transmission to children from mothers who are HIV positive," he told AAP.

"The challenge is still though to get the prevention message across to high risk groups and differently in different places."

In Asia, UNAIDS in a 2009 report warned the group at greatest threat to HIV in the near term will be among men who have sex with men.

"So there are needs to get better access to those specific populations - often urban in that case - and get the message through," he said.

Australia has stepped up financial support to the UN Global Fund on the treatment of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis to $210 million last year, representing a 50 per cent increase in assistance.

Mr Proctor said Australia was also supporting international efforts to "reduce legal impediments" to an effective public health response to HIV.

These include calls for reform of laws governing sex workers, men who have sex with men, and promoting harm reduction programs among injecting drug users.

In several countries in Asia the death penalty can apply to those arrested for heroin use and other narcotics.

Australia is currently working with the Vietnamese government to change the way injecting drug users are treated, together with measures in dealing with injecting drug use in prisons in Indonesia.

"So yes, you see hope across the region and it underlines the fact a national government response is the most important," Mr Proctor said.